Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising Multiplayer Hands-on

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Team up with a friend and recapture Skira.

By Jeff Haynes

Until now, we've focused solely on the single-player campaign of Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, the upcoming, realistic battlefield first-person shooter. As the leader of a four-man fire team, it's up to you to successfully direct your men to their objectives and accomplish them with minimal injuries to your troops. Along with the standard campaign, Dragon Rising will also feature a multiplayer component to expand the warfare to friends or friendly competition. At a recent event, I got a chance to check out both the campaign and multiplayer, and tested the controls as both a squad member and a team leader.

For those of you who don't know about Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, the game takes place in the near future where China has invaded a small island called Skira off the coast of its mainland for its recently discovered oil. China's justification for its actions is that the land originally belonged to the country from the 1400s, when it was originally discovered by Chinese explorers. However, Russia has controlled Skira since the end of World War II, leading to regionalized tensions that could erupt in full scale war as both countries amass their armies along their mutual border. The US deploys troops to Skira in hopes of averting this conflict, putting you squarely up against the People's Liberation Army. While you can play the game by yourself, it's possible to take three additional friends and deploy into a new campaign as a squad, each player taking on the role of one of the members of the fire team.

Before you are deployed into a mission, players pick their specialization, which governs their weapon loadout. For example, a medic isn't going to carry an SAW; instead, he'll have lighter weapons to allow him to perform his life-saving actions in the midst of battle. Similarly, an engineer might carry more demolition charges to destroy structures, and a machine gunner might pack a few more magazines of ammo than other players. Regardless of what your specialization is, one player will take on the role of team leader, who is the only player able to coordinate artillery and airstrike attacks, as well as direct the squad with tactics to take out their enemies. The team leader can also lead his troops by telling them where to move, whether or not to suppress enemies or retreat from a location, or what formation they should be in. All of this is done with the quick radial command, which is governed by the right bumper or the Q button on the keyboard.

Of course, a poor team leader can quickly get players on their team killed with bad decisions, leading them into ambushes as well as directing them into the midst of fire. However, one significant change from the single-player campaign to co-op is that every player has full control over their own soldier, so you're not forced or obligated to listen to the team leader. Therefore, you can disregard orders in favor of doing whatever you want to do, like attempting to clear an objective by yourself or engaging a rival squad of soldiers. Clearly, that insubordination won't help out the rest of your team, and it could potentially lead to you getting yourself killed. It became rather apparent at the event that to be successful, players would need to follow leaders they trusted, particularly when you started playing on higher difficulty levels.

Multiplayer, on the other hand, is a much more straightforward affair with two modes that allow players to choose to be on either the American or Chinese side of the conflict. One of the modes, Infiltration, wasn't on display, although we were told that it was a rather basic concept with one team attempting to break into a base while the other tried to repel them. The other mode, Annihilation, was the standard deathmatch variety, although respawning was a bit tricky; instead of leaping back into a battle or being placed near a checkpoint, the game would randomly select an area and generate your character there. This could be back in the middle of a firefight or hundreds of meters away, forcing you to grab transportation or sprint back to the battlezone. Needless to say, this was very strange, especially because the AI seemed to constantly spawn and respawn right where they'd fallen.

While there were plenty of mounted machine guns, as well as turrets in vehicles, there didn't seem to be any artillery or air strikes available to team leaders in multiplayer. That was fortunate, because it could be extremely easy to have members of your team sacrificed as you fixed an enemy position long enough to have ordinance dropped on it, thereby earning a ton of points for yourself and your squad.

While I only had a quick glimpse at the multiplayer, the pacing of the action felt fast enough to keep me alert as I fought computer and human soldiers alike. The only thing that was a bit disconcerting was the redundancy of the radial wheel, which would offer some of the same commands multiple different ways instead of providing additional combat options. For example, I noticed that there were at least three different ways that you could issue the command, "follow me," based on the order, whereas I couldn't direct (or potentially figure out the command for) some of my troops to toss grenades or snipe an enemy. This concern aside, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising looks like it will definitely have gameplay that will appeal to realistic shooter fans when it is released next month.